An Analysis of Factors Influencing Tourists’ Stay in Mashhad Ecotourism Resorts

The purpose of the research was to investigate factors influencing the duration of stay of tourists in Mashhad ecolodges. It is an applied, descriptive-analytical survey. The unit of analysis included two phases: The first phase contains all tourists who visited Mashhad ecolodges in spring, 2019, and the second phase included academic experts and scholars. Purposive sampling was used for data collection. Therefore, 146 tourists were selected as the sample in the first phase. In the second phase, 20 academic experts and scholars (up to saturation point) were selected as the sample via purposive sampling. SPSS, EXPERT CHOISE, and Fuzzy Vikor Model were used for data analysis. Expert Choice Software was used to rank the factors influencing the duration of stay in ecolodges from experts’ view. Beautiful scenery was ranked as the most important factor (weight = 0.100), and festivals had the lowest rank (0.30). Then, Fuzzy Vikor Model was used to rank Mashhad ecolodges based on the duration of stay of tourists. From among the ecolodges, the following ones had the highest and the lowest rank respectively: Uncle Ne’mat Cottage, weight = 0.257; Arg Kang Ecolodge, weight = 0.213; Varjavand Mansion, weight = 0.207; Radkan Arg, weight =0.100; Mazhal, weight = 0.087; Shahrbanoo, weight = 0.075; and Kang Kohan, weight = 0.060.